Short Story

IN TIMES OF WAR AND LIGHT

by

Joseph Young
 

Martha glowed. She was my friend Calvin's new girlfriend and she shone like a bright star through the dead winter branches. She was tall, had dark hair, and the light that came out from her eyes was bitter and beautiful beyond anything I'd ever seen. I stood around her just to catch that hard silver light, the flash of pale neck rising like cream out of her dark shirt. Calvin didn't seem to care; he liked me. He liked me around helping him to make Martha laugh. "Shit," he said happily whenever I told a good one, his eyes lapping up Martha's smile.

§

I first met Martha three months after I'd broken up with my girlfriend, Jennifer. Jen and I were serious, so serious we bought a car together, always used the pronoun we. For some reason, my strongest memory of Jen is of us lying in a yellow field. I lay behind her with my arm hooked around just below her breasts. It was hot in the field, and the tall grass shimmying in the wind was as fragrant as the sea. She dropped her head to look at me, her hair framed in clover.

"Why don't we not use anything next time?" she said. "Let's have a baby."

I smirked. "Sure. We'll be as destitute as Russians."

§

Jen dumped me, and it was like half my body was torn away. I was punched and bleeding and couldn't catch my breath. But at night, just before midnight came and I was getting ready to sleep, the night air seemed to shimmer around me. I was so swollen with self-pity that loveliness was wrung out of the air and hung about in the darkness.

§

One morning I was on my way to Calvin's house to go for a hike. I was winded from walking so quickly from the bus stop, and my heart was like a baby bird's in my chest. When I climbed the stairs to his apartment and knocked on the door, the smell of candlelight rose from the hippies who lived below. Martha answered the door in a rust-colored coat and smiled at me. I followed her inside and she gave me a cup of water.

§

"Where are we going?" I asked as we piled into Martha's car. The sun was high in the sky already and was pouring with yellow light.

Martha looked back at me in the rear-view mirror. "It doesn't matter, I guess. As long as we don't waste the day away."

Calvin laughed, the blond back of his head bouncing up and down. "She's terrified of waste. It's all she can talk about. She's afraid we're all wasting away."

Martha gave Calvin a significant look, and I shifted uneasily in my seat. I didn't know what was going on. "Maybe we are," I said testily, sneering out at the streets through my open window.

§

The drive was long and uneventful. We passed through endless suburbs, the tracts of new houses looking forlorn and mourning on the new raw earth. At one point, I fell asleep and started dreaming about television ads: Cars sliding serpentine around wet curves, curlicues of pink icing on top of toaster snacks. I woke to see Martha leaning her head against the headrest, her wrists draped elegantly over the steering wheel. We were stopped in traffic at a construction site.

"Have you guys ever dreamt about television commercials?" I asked.

"I just was," Calvin said. "I dreamt about dish-washing liquid that smelled like almonds."

I waved my hand in the air. "You're lying."

"No I'm not."

The flag woman motioned us through with her orange flag. As we passed, I saw the woozy, gray look on her face, as if she'd had a heavy night of drinking. The gray of her hair peaked out below the orange helmet.

"God, what an ugly sight," Martha said.

§

My other friends say that it's pathetic, this liking someone unavailable. But look. We drove up into the hills, under the eucalyptus trees and the sky electric with sunshine, and we got out. It was so warm that we left our jackets in the car and went bare-armed into the day. The three of us climbed a little knoll, following a path that dusted our shoes yellow. There was an oak tree at the top and beneath it a pile of cracked stones sprinkled with lichen. Standing on the stones, we looked over the hills. They were like a picture book of China: Their flanks bathed in warm light; their tops crowned with dense thickets of dark trees. The wind flowed lightly over our faces, and in this scene Martha stood with her feet pointing in a narrow V. Reaching toward the hills with her hands, she shrugged in a way that said, "This is good."

I was there, too. I saw the whole thing. What excuse do I have to make?

§ § §

I was watching the news. There are 37 different civil wars happening in the world. In this century, civil war is far more costly than the wars between states. It's just a matter of time before the violence leaks out over here, too.

§

I called Martha.

"Meet me down at Silver's then," she said. "We can get a pitcher of margaritas." She sounded so complicit that it made me water at the mouth. I was out the door into the fog, the sky behind as dark and shining as wet carbon. When I came in the door, the heat and stink of beer was a curtain I had to push through. Everyone leaned over their drinks like this was Mexico, wilted and sullen.

"So," I said.

"So," she replied, tipping her dark hair out of her face.

I traced her voice, and my own, for the crumbly timbre of guilt.

§

By midnight we were drunk, down to our t-shirts and siting by the pool table. I was scared of trying to touch her, of putting my hand over hers. I was trying to remind myself of how I had once touched Jen.

"Do you mind?" I said and scooted closer to her on the wooden bench.

Her eyes smoldered with hatred; I could see a war being fought in there. Should she spit in my face or go right to the pay phone and call Calvin?

But she leaned her head against my shoulder. "Sometimes we're all so fucked up," she said. "I can't even stand myself."

§

Her house was quiet, with only the orange light from the street lamp washing over the living room and the brown couch. Her lips were soft and tasted of metal. We kissed, then caught our breath, and kissed again. It took us two hours just to take our shoes off.

§ § §

Calvin didn't call for two weeks and I was sure he knew--Martha had already been over twice. Then, as I was taking a bath, the phone rang. I raced out, dripping on the rug, cupping my penis in my palm because of the open shades.

"You want to meet Martha and me for dinner?" Calvin asked.

"You and Martha?"

"Yeah, she says she wants to see you again."

I went to get dressed in my warmest clothes. I felt like I was going into the trenches.

§

Jen had called me a few nights earlier to wish me a happy birthday. We talked a while and she said she was feeling scared. She wants to quit her job, but the economy is starting to go bad.

"We're used to living in a land of plenty," she said. "What happens if things get a lot worse?"

I told her not to worry too much because there always seemed to be enough to go around. I told her being happy was more important. I told her to live the way she thought was best. I wasn't even sure I knew what I was talking about. The whole conversation appeared to be spoken in code.

§

When I got to the restaurant, Martha and Calvin sat on the other side of a table covered by a crisp white tablecloth. Their cut glass water goblets shown through with brilliant light.

I pulled out the wooden chair opposite them and eased down. The heavy black menu was adorned with a crimson tassel.

"Would you like to order now?" asked the Indian man in his ruffled shirt.

Martha's eyes dropped over her menu, her lips moving silently. Calvin hadn't opened his menu. He hadn't moved at all since I came in the door.

§

"So what do you want to do? Do you want to fight?" They were the stupidest words I've ever said.

Calvin shook his head. "It's shameless," he said. "You have no shame."

I looked at Martha, but she wouldn't look back. She was watching a man and his daughter eating tandoori across the aisle from us. She lifted her purse off the seat next to her. "Why don't we leave now? Before cutlery starts flying?"

There was a moment of stillness before Calvin made a silly face at me. My heart went absolutely wild with the thought of forgiveness.

Then he stood. "Groveling little asshole," he said and tossed a butter knife into my lap.

§ § §

He was right, that last thing he said in the restaurant. I wrote him an e-mail: "I was dumb beyond my wildest imagination. It's ridiculous and incredibly embarrassing. I feel so humiliated, like an exile or a refugee, hated wherever I go."

He didn't respond.

§

Next, I went to his house. He answered the door in a t-shirt and his boxers. I heard the television running a foreign movie in the next room.

"Oh my god," he said when he saw me. "You're a sick dude."

My face turned red and I was going to punch him in the gut. But everything inside and outside went gooey. I was smothering in an opaque jelly.

"Go home," he said. "This is too weird."

I suddenly had to go to the bathroom very badly, like being in church when I was twelve.

§

I didn't sleep well. I woke in the middle of the night with the darkness jerking around my head. Waking, I often couldn't tell where I was for twenty seconds or more, staring at my cat and not remembering his name. I lived with an itching sense of catastrophe. I couldn't feel a future in front of me. Of course, none of this was unknown to me even before this shit had begun.

§ § §

"Don't worry so much," she said. "He won't talk to me either." She was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her breasts. "How could you even expect him to?"

I shook my head. "I don't." I looked at her with her dark hair falling over her shoulders. I couldn't believe it.

"What's so funny?" she said.

"Nothing."

"Come on. What's so funny? Why are you laughing at me?"

"Really. It's nothing."

It was terrible, really terrible, what I had done. It was hard to live with myself, and sometimes I couldn't. Sometimes I felt like all the lovely, greasy light had gone out of the world. But so what? What was I going to do? Give up? Stop living? Stop struggling for all the things that I had won?

####


Joseph Young lives with Maddox, his cat, in Baltimore where he works full-time as an editor and part-time as a writer and where he wishes these time commitments were reversed. He will happily consider any offers that might allow him to do so.

He has had nonfiction work published in Baltimore's The Urbanite magazine and a tiny story at absolutewrite.com.

Please direct any pleasantly diverting emails to: youngjoseph21@hotmail.com .